Authorities: Maria to be placed with foster family in Bulgaria

By Laura Smith-Spark and Radina Gigova, CNN

Updated 1559 GMT (2359 HKT) October 31, 2013

Photos: Greece's mystery girl11 photos

'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – This young girl, reportedly named Maria, was taken in by authorities Thursday, October 17, after she was found in a Roma community near Farsala, Greece. A Roma couple was initially charged with abducting her and falsifying official documents, and the case has generated huge interest in Greece.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – DNA tests have shown that Sasha Ruseva -- who according to neighbors in her Bulgarian Roma village lives in a single-room home with up to nine other children -- is Maria's biological mother. "We gave her away. I didn't take any money. I didn't have any food to give to her. Since I saw her on the TV, I've been sick," Ruseva told in Bulgaria's TV7.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Living conditions in the Roma village of Nikolaevo, where Saska Ruseva and Atanas Rusev live, are rudimentary. Horse-drawn carts are still used for transportation of people and goods.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Maria's 14-year-old sister, Minka, holds a faded newspaper photograph of her little sister on Saturday, October 26 in Nikolaevo. The two have never met.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – In this handout photo provided by police, suspects Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, and Christos Salis, 39, sit with the girl. A lawyer for the couple told the Reuters news agency that the couple adopted the girl with the permission of her biological mother.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – The couple's lawyer conceded that the adoption was "nonlegal," but he said he believed the girl's biological mother would verify the couple's claims.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Authorities asked questions about the girl because she has fair skin and blond hair while her parents have darker complexions typical of Roma. The Romany people, historically called Gypsies, are a race descended from Indian nomads. They face widespread discrimination in Europe.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Roma children play next to a Roma settlement in Farsala, Greece, on Saturday, October 19. Haralambos Dimitriou, head of the local Roma community, said Dimopoulou and Salis raised Maria like a "normal" child.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – A Roma woman walks next to the house where the family lived in Farsala. A spokesman for Smile of the Child, the charity that took Maria in, said the girl was found in "bad living conditions, poor hygiene."

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Medical tests indicate the girl is 5 to 6 years of age, slightly older than initially thought, said Smile of the Child spokesman Panagiotis Pardalis.

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'Maria': Greece's mystery girl – Thousands of calls poured into Greece after authorities released photos of the girl. Authorities released photos of the two adults hoping that someone can provide more information about them.

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Story highlights

Social workers will try to help parents improve living conditions so children can return

Maria will be cared for by a foster family in Bulgaria, authorities there say

Her birth parents were found to be a Roma couple in Bulgaria

The couple's other underage children will now be cared for by authorities

A blond girl found in Greece whose birth parents were traced to a Bulgarian Roma village will be cared for by a foster family when she's returned to Bulgaria, the government's social services agency said

Maria, as the girl was known by the Roma couple with whom she was living in central Greece, was at the center of an international mystery after police discovered her.

DNA tests eventually showed that Saska Ruseva and her husband, Atanas Rusev, were her biological parents.

Her mother told CNN that she wants her child back -- but that seems unlikely to happen for now.

Maria, now being cared for by Greek children's charity Smile of a Child, will instead be cared for by a foster family.

The parents and their nine children have been living in poverty in a tumbledown, one-room mud brick house in the village of Nikolaevo, in central Bulgaria.

Emil Todorov, director of the Children Protection Department of Bulgaria's Agency for Social Assistance, told CNN it was not yet clear what documents Maria would arrive with.

Bulgaria's State Child Protection Agency has yet to say exactly when and how the girl will be brought from Greece, he said. Her interactions with her birth family will be determined by who is named as her legal guardian, he said.

The Agency for Social Assistance is also taking action to care for the Bulgarian parents' seven underage children.

"We don't take away the children," he said. "We count on the collaboration by the whole family to cope with this difficult situation."

The Agency for Social Assistance said it had determined the parents had another child too, who was "abandoned by her parents and raised by a family in another city."

Bulgarian police are investigating the Rusevs on suspicion they sold Maria for illegal adoption. A Greek Roma couple -- Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulo -- who were found looking after the girl are in custody, charged with kidnapping.

Daughter given away, says mother

Ruseva told CNN that she and her husband left for Greece in 2009 to look for farm work. She says she left her eldest daughter Katia, now 20 years old, to care for the family while they were away.

Ruseva says she was so thin she did not realize she was pregnant with Maria. "I didn't know I was pregnant. I didn't even have a belly," she said.

Maria -- whom Ruseva originally named Stanka -- was born in a hospital in the Greek town of Lamia, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) from Farsala and the Roma camp where she was discovered this month.

Ruseva said she cared for Maria for seven months while her husband worked in poorly paying odd jobs, picking fruit and vegetables. They often slept in the streets or nearby olive groves, as they had so little money.

Then one day, when they took a job picking oranges, a woman offered to take care of their daughter and they gave her to the woman because they couldn't care for her themselves, Ruseva said. She denies selling the baby, saying she loves her and wants her back.